by L. E. Flynn
I fight the urge to shake him, to make him see what I’m seeing. But he just stands there, expressionless.
The bell rings and I start edging down the hall toward Mr. Hanson’s classroom. Jasper doesn’t even seem to notice. I turn around and walk faster, annoyed that he’s this blind. Maybe he was obsessed, and it hurts too much for him to imagine her in love with another guy.
I’m in front of the library doors when he catches up to me and grabs my arm. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, I’m sorry. It’s just a lot to process.”
Before I can protest, I’m letting him pull me into the library, past where Gabby Reynolds is sitting with headphones on, and into the stacks at the back. When we’re alone, he lets his backpack drop to the ground. There’s a wildness in his eyes I haven’t seen before, something feral. Something scared.
“I want to find her,” he says, his words spilling out. “I want to find her more than anything. But if we don’t find her, I don’t want to lose you.”
His hands cup the sides of my face, his palms cold on my skin. His mouth is on mine and it’s hungry, desperate, too much. He presses me into the stacks and the blood rushes into my ears, and everything that’s pent up inside me comes out as I kiss him back. Love and lust and betrayal and confusion and anger and guilt. My heart beats everywhere, a timer counting down to nothing and everything.
The next day, and the one after that, I let Jasper hold my hand in the hallway, even though it feels wrong, like there’s supposed to be someone else by my side, and someone else by his. When we walk past Beau, I manage to look up. It’s the first time I have looked at him, actually looked, since that day at his house, the day he reached inside my chest and shredded whatever was left of my heart. His eyes are red and he looks terrible, and it should make me happy that he’s suffering but I’m not—I have a boy attached to my hand who wants to kiss me and be seen in public with me, but I’m not happy.
Maybe I can’t keep my promises to myself, but I still feel like it’s my responsibility to keep the one I made to him at Alison’s party, even if I was too drunk to remember it. I swear I won’t let you unravel.
So instead of waiting for Jasper after school, I pull my car out of the parking lot and follow Beau as he goes partway down the sidewalk, watch him look both ways and pull something out of his backpack. He stares at it and hunches over, and I lean on my horn.
He jumps so fast that the bottle slips and shatters on the pavement. At first, I can tell he’s pissed. He throws his hands over his head and punches the air with white-knuckled fists. Then he crouches down on the cement, like he’s seeing if anything is left besides broken glass.
I beep my horn again. This time he turns around, so quickly that he’s almost thrown to the ground by his own backpack. He squints, like he can’t make out that it’s me. I consider just driving away so that he doesn’t, but then I think about the Beau I met freshman year and won’t give up on.
“Hey,” I say, hoping I sound more confident than I feel. “Need a ride?”
“I can walk,” he says flatly. “You don’t need to do me any favors. You hate me.”
I want to tell him that maybe I do hate him, and I have good reason to, but I think of something else instead. “Remember when you rode a bike everywhere, and you gave me rides? I just thought it was my turn to drive you somewhere. And there’s a place I think we should go.”
He hesitates, and something like a smile flickers across his face. He starts moving slowly to the car. “I forgot all about that bike. I think it’s rusting away in my dad’s shed. But this isn’t really a good time. Can it wait?”
I shake my head, try to keep my voice casual. “Come on. I’ll have you home in time for dinner.”
He glances both ways, then opens my car door and gets in, shoving his backpack on the floor between his feet. He crosses his arms over his chest and exhales deeply.
“Forget dinner,” he says. “You know, we used to be all about the family dinner. Not these days. It’s like my parents got a divorce and remarried their jobs instead. Those dinners are long gone. I miss walking in and smelling my mom’s cooking.”
“Her lasagna,” I say. When he doesn’t respond, I keep talking. “You said your mom made a really good lasagna.”
“Yeah, that,” he says. “I never thought I’d miss it as much as I do. I never thought I’d give a second thought to those stupid family dinners. ‘Home by five, son.’” His voice drops into a steely impersonation of his dad, who I only know from the sidelines of football games. “Like we were the goddamned ‘perfect family.’ We even had a golden retriever.” He leans his elbow against the window. “The dog died, like weeks after Toby went away. The vet said he died of heart failure.”
“But you think it was a broken heart.” I put on my blinker and pull onto the street.
* * *
His phone goes off, an annoying chirping ringtone. My heart sinks like a stone because I know it’s the ringtone he has for Jenny. He types something back. A lie. It’s easy to lie when you’re not face-to-face with someone, when they can’t even hear your voice.
“Sorry,” he says, except I’m not sure who he’s apologizing to. Still, I almost smile when he says it, because the Beau I used to know said sorry a lot too. It was like a reflex for him. One time when our group was eating lunch outside, I got stung by a bee, and when I felt the pinch on my arm and said ouch, Beau instinctively said sorry. Which took the sting away and replaced it with something better.
I almost mention that now but stop short because what good would it do, reminding him of who he used to be? It’s not like I want to be reminded of who I was, the person I gave up.
We drive past Cabana Del Shit, past the volleyball courts at the beach, past the McDonald’s and sushi restaurant in the same shitty little plaza as Dr. Rosenthal’s building. I wonder if Alison is in there right now, if she’s wrestling with whatever lurks under her perfect façade.
“Do you remember when Colton destroyed the McDonald’s bathroom?” Beau says, leaning his forehead against the window. “That time after our game against Blackwood, when he ate like twenty cheeseburgers.”
“I remember,” I say. “I didn’t think it was possible for people to get kicked out of a McDonald’s before that.”
Beau chuckles, just a couple syllables at first, then it turns into a full-blown laugh. I haven’t heard him laugh like that in ages. I had forgotten what his real laugh sounded like. It’s funny because it’s not what you would expect out of him. It’s kind of high-pitched and involves his whole body quaking. I start to laugh too, hard enough that I forget about how I’m paranoid that my stomach jiggles when I do that, or hard enough not to care.
“It used to be fun,” Beau says, pressing his fingers into the corners of his mouth. “That day was fun. You were in the PlayPlace throwing plastic balls around with Alison. You had that frilly skirt on, I still remember it. Back then, we had such a good time.”
I nod. It was fun back then, when everything felt so easy, when I made cute clothes and friends appeared in front of me and the boy I loved wanted to stare at stars with me. It’s not like now, when my friends aren’t friends at all and the frilly skirt doesn’t fit and nothing feels like a good time.
“Can I ask you something?” he says. “Why’d you really stop hanging out with us? It seemed like you turned into a whole different person. Like, the old group wasn’t good enough anymore. Was it only because of her?”
The reality of his words hits me like a pile of rocks. I guess I thought of it the opposite way. That the old group wasn’t a group anymore. It was fractured beyond repair and had been too easily rebuilt without me. First Beau broke, then Jenny broke me. And they moved on so quickly that it was like I was never there at all.
“I don’t know,” I lie. It’s not like I can tell him the real reason. Jenny put a stake in you and claimed you for herself.
“She’s persuasive,” Beau says. “I know what she did to you. Same as she did to him. Sucked him into her w
eb like a black widow.”
“So what?” I grip the steering wheel tightly. “I’m a stupid fly?”
Beau lets out a long breath. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, you weren’t the only one who got sucked in. That’s all.” He pauses, and I can tell he’s debating his next words, wondering if he wants to let them out. “Most people prey on the weak, but not her. She made everybody her victims.”
“Including you,” I snap. Maybe it’s ridiculous for me to still be this insanely jealous, but it’s in my head all day long. Trixie and Beau. Beau and Trixie. What they did, even after she knew how I felt about him. What he did, after I never showed up that night. Maybe I’m that easy to betray.
“I guess so,” he says softly. And I want him to keep talking, because as pissed off as I am, it feels good talking about her with someone else who got sucked in. Someone who isn’t Jasper, who sometimes likes to pretend she never existed at all.
I make a left at the next set of lights and turn into the parking lot, where a church sits behind a neglected line of hedges, almost like it’s hiding there on purpose. Which is why it’s the perfect place.
“Why are we stopping here?” Beau says, pushing his hair behind his ears. “Don’t tell my mom, but I’m an atheist. Sorry, church isn’t happening. It’s way too late to pray for my goddamned soul.”
I undo my seat belt. “Not church. No religion. Something else.”
He follows me across the parking lot, kicking up bits of gravel with his shoes. I can tell he wants to run away, but he doesn’t. Until we go down the church stairs and see the sign and he figures out where I have taken him. An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I looked up online between classes today.
He shakes his head and throws his hands in the air. “No way. No fucking way. I’m not one of those people.” He spins around, turns to leave. I block his way.
“Just stay, even for ten minutes. Give it a chance.”
“No,” he says, his eyes steel. “Do you even know what my dad would say if he saw me here? He’d never talk to me again. ‘The only help you need is the help you give yourself, son.’ He thinks all your problems can be fixed if you think hard enough about how to fix them.”
“How’s that working out for you? You once asked me if I like who I am now. If I ask you the same question, what would you say?”
He leans against the railing. “It doesn’t even matter who I am. It just matters who I’m not.”
“It matters to me!” I yell, throwing up my hands.
He steps onto the stair in front of me until he’s inches away from my face. He’s breathing heavily and his nostrils are flaring, and I’m not sure if he’s going to kiss me or scream at me. But he does neither.
“Just take me home,” he says. “I don’t care if you tell everyone what we did at the party. It’s better than going in there. Anything’s better than that.”
I follow him to the car. We drive back to Morrison Beach without saying a word and I can tell that he hates me now, that whatever ground I had made with him has been pulled out from under me.
“Drop me here,” he says when we’re two streets away from his house. My heart is heavy, like a boulder, like an anchor. He gets out of the car without saying a word, and even though he stops on the sidewalk like he’s thinking about turning around, he breaks into a run until he’s just a blur.
60
IT TAKES ME another three days to get the courage to go to Trixie’s house alone, because I know better than to ask Jasper to come here with me. I know this is a bad idea the second I’m standing at her front door. This time, Mr. Heller is home and I’ll have to face him and think of some reason why I need to use Trixie’s computer. I still don’t know what I’m going to say when he opens the door and I’m face-to-face with him.
He smiles when he sees me. A real smile, like he wants me there. He doesn’t know how much hate I have for his daughter, the person he loved most.
“Fiona,” he says. He must have just been doing dishes, because his hands are soapy and he’s holding a towel, which he slings over his shoulder. He steps onto the porch in bare feet and hugs me anyway, because that’s what Mr. Heller does. He’s a hugger, and it doesn’t matter how long you have known him, whether it’s two seconds or ten years. He’ll hug everyone like that.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I just, you know, got busy.”
He pats me on the back. “I’m glad you got busy. You should be busy. Please, come in. Tea or coffee? You’ll have to excuse me, the house is a mess.”
I accept his offer of tea, even though I don’t want him to go out of his way to do anything for me. He owes me nothing, and I owe him an explanation I can’t even begin to say out loud.
We make awkward small talk about school and the weather, and I ask him if he has been out surfing. If there was one thing Mr. Heller loved almost as much as he loved Trixie, it was surfing. Anytime I slept over at her house, he was up before the sun to hit the beach, and he’d track sand through the hallway and rave about the “gnarly waves” while Trixie made a face over her cereal bowl.
“No surfing this year,” he says. “I’m starting to think it’s a young person’s sport. My old bones can’t take the beating anymore.”
I want to think of a thousand ways to talk him out of that, but the words die on my lips. I wish I could make Trixie watch this, watch what she has done to her dad. How could she be so selfish? How could she not realize how badly this would damage him?
“You were a good friend to her,” he says out of nowhere, staring into his tea. “She was going through some things, before she met you. I think you were a good influence on her, and I appreciate that more than you’ll ever know.” His voice is thick and I silently will him not to cry, because if he cries I might just break down and tell him everything.
“What do you mean? What happened?” I was a good friend, but she wasn’t a friend at all.
Mr. Heller wraps his hands around his mug and sighs, a deflated sound, like air going out of a tire. “I never really knew the answer to that. She just became withdrawn. Didn’t want to leave her room. She wouldn’t tell me what happened. I tried to get her to talk to someone, but she didn’t want to, so I didn’t force her. Maybe I should have forced her.”
I lift my mug to my lips. The tea is still too hot to drink, but I sip it anyway. I know why. Because of what happened on eight thirty-one seventeen.
“It was hard for me,” he says. “When I adopted her, the agency didn’t know much about her birth parents. I didn’t know what ran in the family, what disorders—if there were mental health issues? I wanted to do everything I could for her, but it wasn’t enough.”
“It was enough,” I say, my voice trembling. “She loves you.”
He gives me a tight-lipped smile but I know he doesn’t believe me, and that makes me feel like the worst person in the world.
“Loved me,” he says. “Maybe, but I think there was a lot of resentment that she tried to bury. Growing up and finding out she was adopted was hard on her. I don’t think she ever got over the fact that someone abandoned her.” He shakes his head. “If I had just done a better job of being around, maybe things would be different.”
“You were around. I think she was going to do what she did regardless of who was around.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” he says.
I stare at my mug. It has a picture of an apple and the words A+ Teacher on it, which means Mr. Heller must have picked it up at a garage sale. I want to tell Mr. Heller that she was like him, in a lot of ways. Her love of bargains and her peace-sign wave and even the way she hunched forward on her elbows when she concentrated. And I desperately want to tell him how much she loved him, how when she rolled her eyes at his lame jokes, it wasn’t because she was embarrassed but because she was proud. She just had a funny way of showing it. She had a funny way of showing a lot of things.
I’m trying to find a way to ask about the laptop when he makes it easy for me.
; “You know, I meant to ask you this at the funeral, but it was so overwhelming,” he says. “I want you to know that if there’s something of hers that you want, you can have it. I know you girls were close, and she didn’t leave anything behind for you either.”
No, she didn’t, I want to scream. Not even a clue. Just secrets that keep opening up to reveal new ones inside them, like those wooden Russian dolls, except they’re getting bigger instead of smaller.
“Actually,” I say, curling my fingers around the handle of my mug. “I was wondering if I could borrow her laptop. There was this project we were working on together, and I thought she might have kept the notes.”
It’s a weak excuse, but Mr. Heller just nods. “I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for. The police checked it, searched her history, the whole deal. She erased everything. Even all the pictures she used to keep on there.” He grips the edge of the table and exhales, a shaky breath. “I think she didn’t want any of us to have memories to be sad about.”
Or she didn’t want to leave a trail, any hint of where she went.
Maybe finding the truth doesn’t mean guessing where to look, throwing a dart and following a path to nowhere. Maybe it’s knowing what I’m looking for to begin with.
61
I MET YOUR dad by accident. We were eating Popsicles in your backyard, our feet stretching off your deck and onto the grass. Your lips were turning blue, a darker version of the Popsicle you were sucking on. You plucked a daisy that was growing between the deck’s wooden boards and rubbed the stem between your fingers.
“If I ever get married, I’m having a crown of these,” she said. “None of this glittery tiara bullshit.”
“And who are you marrying?” I joked. “Jasper?”
She picked one of the daisy’s petals off and blew it into the grass. “Nobody. Forget I said anything.” She stuck out her left wrist, the one with the scars on it, which was strange, because she usually hid them. That day, she had no bracelets on, no sleeves pulled down.